The History
Kammermusikfest Lockenhaus
“You have rarely seen such an individualistic group of artists more relaxed and cheered up both internally and externally. Showmanship is always frowned upon in Lockenhaus”
was something that could be read in Die Zeit in 1981, the year it was founded, about the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival.
Founded in 1981 by Gidon Kremer and Msgr. Prof. Josef Herowitsch, the festival quickly developed into an internationally recognized oasis of chamber music. The impressive knight's castle with its knight's hall, which is said to have served as a secret meeting place for the Templars, and the beautiful baroque Lockenhaus church offer enchanting performance venues in the middle of the forests of Central Burgenland. The festival has always served as a place for discoveries, experiments, the presentation of young or as yet unknown artists, the building of artistic partnerships and lifelong friendships through making music together at the highest level.
The list of top artists who performed at the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival to achieve these goals is long and very impressive. A whole generation of composers such as Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt became known to Western audiences through performances at the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival. György Kurtág presented his compositions here, Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducted the Lockenhaus Festival Ensemble consisting of well-known soloists of the respective season and Boris Pergamenschikow, Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Heinrich Schiff, Martha Argerich, Oleg Maisenberg, Robert Holl and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau were also part of the Chamber Music Festival like the still very young Hagen Quartet, which took its first steps towards a world career from Lockenhaus, to name just a few.
The world has changed since then, the festival was named a European cultural heritage site by the New York Times and Eleonore Büning writes in the FAZ:
“...nobody who wasn’t there will believe that anyway.”
In 2011, Gidon Kremer handed over the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival to the French-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt. By adding his own personal profile and building his own family of musicians for the festival, the founding spirit lives on under his artistic leadership: year after year, music lovers from all over the world make a pilgrimage to the small, picturesque village of Lockenhaus in Austria's smallest federal state, Burgenland, to be in the heart of Europe - remote from the world – to experience chamber music in unique intensity and closeness. Since 2018, Géza Rhomberg has been leading the organization of the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival as General Manager.